Documentaries
were a new category that was added in 1941 (with the Oscar given to Churchill's
Island from the Canadian Film Board (and UA), the first of several consecutive
WWII documentaries to win in the same category). The Academy Awards ceremony
for 1941 was held only a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on
February 26, 1942. Soon, the Hollywood community would rally to boost morale
and provide entertainment for the troops. Carole Lombard died in a tragic
plane crash about a month before the Oscar ceremony, on January 16, 1942,
after a War Bond rally tour appearance.

The Best Picture winner was John Ford's populist, sentimental tale spanning
fifty years of an impoverished and disintegrating Welsh mining town and family
that was based on Richard Llewellyn's best-selling novel, How
Green Was My Valley (with ten nominations and five wins - Best Picture,
Best Supporting Actor (Crisp), Best Director, Best B/W Cinematography by Arthur
Miller, and Best Art Direction). Through the eyes of young son Huw (Roddy
McDowall), the episodic life (including crises such as strikes and mine disasters,
and joys) of the close-knit Morgan family and Welsh coal-mining community
were remembered in the narrative. [In the previous year, Ford had directed
another Oscar-nominated family saga,
The Grapes of Wrath (1940).]

The other nominees for Best Picture included two debut films for its directors,
two films with nine nominations each, and one film with eleven nominations:

director/writer John Huston's debut film - a fast-paced
film noir/mystery based upon Dashiell Hammett's tale The Maltese Falcon (with three nominations for Best Picture,
Best Supporting Actor, and Best Screenplay, and no wins), about a search
for an elusive Black Bird. This masterpiece is considered one of the greatest
detective/film-noir classics ever made, but it did not win a single
award in any of its three nominated categories

director/actor/producer/writer Orson Welles' first feature
film - Citizen Kane (with nine nominations and only one win - the only
award that the film won was Best Original Screenplay (by Henry J. Mankiewicz
and Orson Welles) - it should have won the Best Picture award); it is generally
acknowledged to be the greatest film ever made by critics and film-fans
- an intriguing tale about a newspaper publisher/tycoon from his early childhood
to his lonely death, told in a series of flashbacks

[Twenty five year-old "boy genius" Welles was the first
to ever receive simultaneous nominations in four categories: as producer,
actor, director, and writer. The previous year, Charlie Chaplin was the
first to ever receive three simultaneous nominations, as producer,
actor, and screenwriter for The Great Dictator (1940).]

director William Wyler's filming of Lillian Hellman's own
play script, The Little Foxes (with nine nominations and no wins!)
about a vicious and destructive Southern matriarch

director Hitchcock's thrilling tale Suspicion (with
three nominations and one win - Best Actress) about a newlywed bride fearful
of her wealthy new husband

director Howard Hawks' true story of a country boy who
becomes a great WWI hero in Sergeant York (with eleven nominations
and two wins - Best Actor and Best Film Editing)

director Mervyn LeRoy's filming of Anita Loos' screenplay
about an orphanage founder, Blossoms in the Dust (with four nominations
and one win - Best Color Interior Decoration)

director Alexander Hall's romantic fantasy Here Comes
Mr. Jordan (with seven nominations and two wins - Best Original Story
and Best Screenplay) about a heavenly mixup and a prizefighter's body-switch
[This film served as the inspiration for director/actor Warren Beatty's
Best Picture-nominated Heaven Can Wait (1978), originally filmed
by director Ernst Lubitsch as the Best Picture-nominated Heaven Can Wait
(1943)]

director Mitchell Leisen's romance Hold Back the Dawn
(with six nominations and no wins) from a screenplay by Billy Wilder and
Charles Brackett

director Irving Rapper's tale of a turn-of-the-century
minister in One Foot in Heaven (with one nomination and no wins)

Even more surprising was that Ford (celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary
in the film industry) also won for Best Director - it was his third
Best Director Award and his second Oscar in a row. (He won previous awards
for The Informer (1935) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940).) [Ford would win one more time eleven
years later for The Quiet Man (1952).] John Huston wasn't nominated for Best Director,
but he was nominated for his Screenplay for The Maltese Falcon. Competing Best Director nominee William Wyler's
film The Little Foxes was his sixth film in a row to receive
a Best Picture nomination without winning. The previous five films were Dodsworth
(1936), Dead End (1937), Jezebel (1938),
Wuthering Heights (1939), and The Letter (1940).
It was also Wyler's fourth Best Director nomination in six years without
winning - he was nominated in 1936, 1939, 1940, and 1941. [Wyler's first
of three Best Director career wins came in 1942, for Mrs. Miniver.]

In keeping with the times, Gary Cooper (with his second nomination) won
his first Best Actor award for his performance as deeply religious
backwoods Tennessee Cumberland Mountains farmer and World War I hero Sergeant
Alvin C. York in Howard Hawks' morale booster Sergeant York. Cooper's
whimsical performance defeated greater epic performances by the following
actors:

Orson Welles (with his sole acting nomination in his career!)
as the Hearst-like Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane

Cary Grant (with his first of two unsuccessful career nominations)
as newspaperman and adoptive father Roger Adams in director George Stevens'
tragic tear-jerker Penny Serenade (the film's sole nomination) -
[Grant's only two nominations were for serious dramatic roles (the other
was for None But The Lonely Heart (1944)), instead of for his wildly-popular
comedies, including The Awful Truth (1937),
Bringing Up Baby (1938), Holiday (1938), and
His Girl Friday (1940).]

Robert Montgomery (with his second and final unsuccessful
nomination) as prizefighter Joe Pendleton who is mistakenly sent to heaven
and then returns to earth in the body of a soon-to-be murdered millionaire
in Here Comes Mr. Jordan

and Walter Huston (with his third nomination) as the Devil
(Mr. Scratch) who bargains with a farmer's soul and orator Daniel Webster
in director William Dieterle's All That Money Can Buy (with two nominations
and one win - Best Dramatic Picture Score)

In the Best Actress category, two sisters were rivals for awards:

Joan Fontaine (with her second nomination in the second
consecutive year for another Rebecca (1940) -like role) as a shy, spinsterish British girl
named Lina McLaidlaw (suspicious of and plagued by her new husband, Cary
Grant, and a glass of milk) in Hitchcock's mystery Suspicion

and her older sister Olivia de Havilland (with her second
nomination) as schoolteacher Emmy Brown (involved in an immigration-marriage
scam and in love with Charles Boyer) in the soap Hold Back the Dawn

Fontaine won her first Oscar, probably as consolation for the previous
year's loss. Both roles were as a victimized young bride. [Her win was the
only Best Actress award ever for a Hitchcock film. De Havilland
would win twice in the 1940s for: To Each His Own (1946) and The
Heiress (1949).]

Other Best Actress nominees included Barbara Stanwyck (with her second of
four unsuccessful career nominations from 1937-1948 - she never won!) as burlesque
nightclub dancer and gangster moll Sugarpuss O'Shea in director Howard Hawks'
Ball of Fire (with four nominations and no wins), Greer Garson (with
her second nomination - and the first of five consecutive nominations) as
Texas orphanage founder Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust, and Bette
Davis (with her fifth nomination - and the fourth of five consecutive nominations)
as Southern schemer Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes.

Donald Crisp (with his sole career nomination) won the Best Supporting Actor
award (it was the only Oscar of his long, fifty-five year career) for
his role as the stern father of the closely-knit Morgan family of Welsh miners,
who is killed in the mine in the film's conclusion in How
Green Was My Valley. Another nominee - Sydney Greenstreet (with his
sole career nomination in his 'talking' film debut at age 61), nominated for
his performance as obsessed, statuette searcher "Fat Man" Casper Gutman in
The Maltese Falcon, was equally deserving. The other nominees were
Walter Brennan (with his fourth and last nomination - the only nomination
in his career which wasn't a winner) as village Pastor Rosier Pile in Sergeant
York, Charles Coburn (with his first nomination) as the world's richest
man/department store owner John P. Merrick (who masquerades as a salesclerk)
in director Sam Wood's romantic comedy The Devil and Miss Jones (with
two nominations and no wins), and James Gleason (with his sole career nomination)
as co-star Robert Montgomery's boxer/manager Max Corkle in Here Comes Mr.
Jordan.

Mary Astor (with her sole career nomination) won the Best Supporting Actress
award and her first and only Oscar for her performance as Sandra Kovak
- a sharp-tongued, selfish and ambitious concert pianist who gives away her
baby (when befriended by Bette Davis, wife of her former lover George Brent)
in The Great Lie (the film's sole nomination). The defeated nominees
included two co-stars from The Little Foxes: Teresa Wright (with her
first nomination in her debut performance) as Alexandra Giddens (daughter
of co-stars Bette Davis and Herbert Marshall), and Patricia Collinge (with
her sole nomination) as Aunt Birdie Hubbard. The remaining nominees were Sara
Allgood (with her sole career nomination) as the loving, supportive, and gentle
mother figure Mrs. Morgan in How Green Was My Valley,
and Margaret Wycherley (with her sole career nomination) as devoted Mother
York in Sergeant York.

Disney won another Short Subject: Cartoon Oscar for Lend a Paw -
his ninth win in the category. Leopold Stokowski received a Special Award
for "unique achievement in the creation of a new form of visualized music"
in Walt Disney's technologically-innovative production of Fantasia - a big commercial flop at the time. The film's innovators
(Walt Disney, William Garity, John N.A. Hawkins, and the RCA Manufacturing
Company) also won a second Special Award for "their outstanding contribution
to the advancement of the use of sound in motion pictures."

Oscar Snubs and Omissions:

Barbara Stanwyck's and Henry Fonda's performances in Sturges' The Lady Eve went unrecognized.

Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart
(as cool, yet tough-talking anti-hero detective Sam Spade) weren't nominated
for their work in John Huston's film-noirish mystery The Maltese Falcon. [In fact, Peter Lorre was never nominated
for an Oscar.] Bogart had another amazing non-nominated performance also
this year, as Roy "Mad Dog" Earle in Raoul Walsh's classic gangster
film High
Sierra (with no nominations). And Mary Astor, who won for The Great
Lie, is better remembered (and would have preferred to have been
nominated and victorious) for the murderous femme fatale Brigid
O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon.

Although there was no Oscar awards category for Best Makeup until 1981, Citizen Kane was remarkable in the way that its characters aged
from start to finish. And although the film had nine nominations, only one
was in an acting category (Best Actor for Orson Welles). Others who had notable
performances included: Joseph Cotten as Jedediah Leland, Dorothy Comingore
as Susan Alexander, Everett Sloane as Mr. Bernstein, and George Coulouris
as Walter Parks Thatcher. Another unforgivable omission was denying the award
of Best B/W Cinematography to nominee Gregg Toland for the film's marvelous
photography.

Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire and Alexander Korda's That Hamilton
Woman were not included in the group of Best Picture nominees. Vivien
Leigh's performance in That Hamilton Woman was also unnominated. Although
Gary Cooper won Best Actor for Sergeant York, he had two other equally important
hits in 1941 without nominations: Ball of Fire, and Meet
John Doe.